Repository: UIHistories Project: Dedication - Grainger Engineering Library [PAGE 8]

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A Grand Tkutition Comes of Age

The University Library is the largest public university library in the United States. It comprises 42 divisions, including the Grainger Center, which alone houses approximately 225,000 volumes and sevemI specialized collections: • Standards collection: ANSI and non-ANSI domestic and certain foreign standards that govern industrial production. • Microforms: major society publications, NASA publications, and U.S. Department of Knergy publications. • The reference collection: handbooks, encyclopedias, dictionaries, directories, standards and specifications, and tabular data in all engineering fields. Database of the collection is available. But the University Library is world renowned for more than the size and scope of its collections—it was also the first library in the world to implement a computerized circulation system, appropriate to the University's position among the world's preeminent computing centers. From early leadership in electronic computing in the 1940s to the distinction of being among the first American universities to maintain an on-campus supercomputirig center, Illinois has earned world recognition in computing technology. The Grainger is a worthy heir to both these proud legacies and has been called "the model for all future academic technical libraries." Computer Hardware. The Grainger houses 60 on-line computers, including seven information kiosk terminals. All offer public access and comprehensive information retrieval capabilities from local and remote electronic, bibliographic, numeric, textual, graphic, and video databases, whether they reside within the Grainger, elsewhere on campus, or at off-site locations worldwide. In all, information retrieval is possible through approximately 100 user terminals in the Grainger Center, 30 of which can accommodate advanced scientific computing, and 20 that can accommodate full-text document imaging and multimedia applications. With as many as 800 available computer hookups, nearly every table, carrel, and desk in the Grainger is wired to the University's computer system and through it to the world. Thus, library users can bring their own laptop computers and access all the systems, networks, and databases. Networks. The Grainger Center is equipped with six network servers accessing CD-ROM, Worldwide Web, Gopher, SQL databases, printing services, and more. Databases. The Grainger offers access to approximately 450 remote and local on-line databases containing more than 75 million references to scientific and engineering literature on campus, throughout Illinois, and at universities and libmries across the countrv and an nun I the world.